The Brief

You may not know Jing Gao by name, but there's a good chance you've come across a jar of her chili crisp Fly By Jing, featuring its hypercharged label resembling a contemporary art piece. It could have caught your eye while perusing the aisles at a local big box store, an occasional boutique shop, or on a friend's kitchen counter.

And if it's not on your counter or in your pantry, it should be.

Certain legacy brands such as Lao Gan Ma have dominated the chili crisp marketplace internationally since the '80s, and in recent years homegrown players such as Momofuku Chili Crisp by David Chang and Boon by Max Boonthanakit have cropped up with their own deliciously sludgy takes on chili crisp.

But, in terms of value and taste, Fly By Jing's chili crisp has continued to impress yours truly so much that I always make sure I have a jar on hand.

After buying chili crisps regularly for the better part of a decade, I've become increasingly dependent on them in my arsenal of kitchen ingredients, using them for everything from frying eggs to pasta sauces. While I'm a big fan of the spicy taste and crunchy flavors, the quality of the sauce is that it never dries out, making it a real winner.

For the uninitiated, chili crisp is an essential Asian hot sauce. But it's in its own category compared to a bottle of Tapatio or Tabasco. The ingredients comprise dried chilies, aromatics, and fermented black beans submerged in chili oil, resulting in a spicy, umami-rich flavor with a textured, crunch-laden bite.

The central spice ingredient is the Sichuan pepper, known for its unique flavor profile that features a tingling, almost numbing effect on the taste buds. It can be found in various dishes, including mapo tofu, dan dan noodles, and toothpick cumin lamb.

One of the most exciting aspects about each chili crisp recipe is that every chef and sauce maker likes to put their spin on it.

Within the last decade, chili crisp has become ubiquitous across the modern American palate. Fly by Jing, ($14), is a standout in the marketplace for more than just its quality and taste: Gao is the only AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) female condiment founder in Los Angeles.

After Gao and I began following each other on Instagram, I witnessed the rapid growth of her Fly By Jing company, ascending from a small start-up to a leader in the condiment industry.

So when an opportunity to speak to Gao came up, I jumped at the chance to learn more about the journey behind her spectacular chili crisp.

Where it all began

Born in Chengdu, China, Gao spent her formative years moving throughout Europe and Canada. Her foray into food began as a chef and restaurateur in China, having previously worked in the tech industry in China and other parts of Asia. Upon switching to pursue her passion for food, she began hosting a series of underground supper clubs in Shanghai, where she came up with the name Fly By Jing.

In 2018, Gao left the chef life and moved to Los Angeles, where she rented an Airbnb, armed with a mission to start her own condiment company, motivated by what she describes as "a desire to share flavors and make them more accessible to western consumers."

Fly By Jing's chili crisp is good on just about everything, any place you'd like a little more spice. There are no rules.

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Courtesy of Fly By Jing

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Driven by a mission

Yes, there are places in L.A. like Bistro Na and Majordomo where Asian food is considered haute cuisine. But those are the exceptions in Gao's experience: She says she believes that in the past, to many mainstream American tastebuds, Chinese food and its corresponding cuisines were seen as cheap and plentiful.

"There was this accepted belief that Chinese food is dirty, cheap, unhealthy, and not worth paying for,” she told me, adding, “And so, of course, anyone who manufactures in China would never export anything of quality because people are told that no one's willing to pay more than a dollar or two for Chinese food."

It's part of the assumption that food from foreign countries, especially non-European companies, should be inexpensive. Similar attitudes stem back to the 19th century when Chinese immigrants first arrived in the Americas during the Gold Rush and were seen as inferior to their white counterparts. It's a similar fate to Mexican food, and the perception in some corners that a taco shouldn't cost more than $5.

So, when starting her condiment company, quality was essential to Gao, who wanted to subvert any Westernized assumptions surrounding Chinese food.

An example that Gao uses during our conversation illustrates this fact, detailing how she sourced the condiment's tribute pepper, a single-origin pepper only grown in one place in the world, located about four hours away by car from Chengdu. Gao detailed for me how she spent years studying and building relationships with the farmers who grow the pepper on a single plot of land, and how it's only harvested once a year.

How she changed the narrative

To Gao, chili crisp was the perfect vehicle for broadening people's sense of taste due to its popularity in China and because, as she puts it, "it's good on everything."

Running a successful Kickstarter campaign allowed Gao to establish the financial footing needed to get the company off the ground. After gaining a viral appeal, selling her chili crisp online eventually led to larger retailers like Costco and Target reaching out to stock her jars.

Traditional usages of chili crisp tend to be found in dishes such as noodles, soup, or vegetables. But as the condiment's popularity has recently grown here in the United States, it's not uncommon to see it used on pasta, pizza, salads, ice cream — and even donuts.

Fly By Jing CEO and founder Jing Gao wants to challenge the notion of how Americans think about Chinese food.

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Courtesy of Fly By Jing

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As her chili crisp empire has grown, so have the business opportunities.

Most recently, she collaborated on a pineapple passion fruit Sichuan chili crisp donut for Holy Grail Donuts, the Hawaiian taro donut company with a cult-like following, with outposts in Santa Monica and Larchmont Village. The made-to-order donut is fried in coconut oil, then covered in a tropical fruit glaze, and finishes off with a smack of heat from the chili crisp.

Gao has also landed similar partnerships with Panda Express, for a limited spicy Wagyu beef dumplings and Shake Shack, which featured a burger and chicken sandwich drizzled with some of Gao's signature sauces, along with a successful collaboration with a tinned fish company of the moment, Fishwife, for a smoked salmon with chili crisp that seemed to be on everyone's table last year. Gao's also published a cookbook, "The Book of Sichuan Chili Crisp: Spicy Recipes and Stories from Fly By Jing's Kitchen," in 2023.

Where she's headed next

Like the many uses of her chili crisp, Gao subverts categorization as she expands her brand beyond chili crisp. In addition to a line of saucy condiments, Fly By Jing also offers vinaigrettes, chili oils, dry spice mixes, and a hot pot starter kit.

Most recently, she's expanded to an actual market and cafe space.

Partnering with lifestyle influencer Stephanie Liu Hjelmeseth, the cafe space, located in the neighborhood of Larchmont Village, Suá Superette, boasts an all-day menu that showcases a variety of organic grab-and-go items, all inspired by Sichuan-style fare and flavors, reimagined.

In addition to the various menu items at Suá Superette, there's a also a variety of Fly By Jing products you can stock up on.

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Courtesy of Fly By Jing

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Inside the space, among the minimalist decor, diners can dig into a variety of dishes that include a vegan mapo tofu made with wild mushrooms, spicy chili-and-cumin grass-fed beef wraps, and cold soba noodles tossed in a sunbutter sesame dressing, to name a few.

The fluidity of cultures comes naturally to Gao, having spent most of her life abroad before calling Los Angeles her home. Throughout her experiences, Jing wanted to offer a product that would appeal to like-minded consumers looking to spice up their lives, a spoonful of chili crisp at a time.

With Suá, a throughline is coming into sharper focus. Gao describes the common thread: "A similar philosophy that's rooted in tradition, but made for the way we eat today, it's modern."

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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Courtesy Steve Campos

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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Laura Hertfeldz

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LAist

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”